While experimenting with technique, I try to push materials out of context to reveal a rawness. It's a collaboration: I create parameters for a substance to behave naturally, and then it exhibits its attributes during a process that I cannot control. Wax is poured on water and bacteria is grown in wine, similarly casting onto monofilament rings, setting organically. Inside the finished works, submerged microbes lie torpid and alive.
For me, the art object inherently evokes a psychic connection. I imagine the sculptures, grounded and serene, strong enough to stand exposed, mirroring an aspect of the human experience. I think about the inside of the body, which is in many ways just as mysterious as outer space. A common cliché, “beauty is on the inside” would always make me think, “what's it like there, on the inside?” It must contain some fundamental mathematical perfection that exists in all of us.
Pedestals point to the historical significance of thrones that elevate and display, supporting mortal and immortal greatness. In my work, the natural world - a tank of bacterial overgrowth and a wax-on-water event - is the object of admiration. Visceral rawness and flirty decoration are one, where the reason to adorn and the adornment are merged. In contrast to earlier works, where skins are fully sutured in place, recent works have a less rigid, more dynamic presence, where “the mother” is free floating. Bacterial slabs are sanguine freak flags waving, and flaunting.
